Good day to all of our loyal friends, family, fans and followers! We haven't posted in a few months, lots of things have been going on. Here's a brief recap:

Last month we celebrated our 2 year anniversary, it was an amazing celebration, lots of cool events were had. Thank you to all of you for coming out or showing your support! We went to our 3rd Asbury Park Beer Fest and had an amazing time. We got approval for an expansion of our premises, purchased some new tanks and are building out the space for them. They will arrive in a few weeks and be filled very shortly after that. The last big update is we are now selling our cans at every Wegmans in New Jersey as well as Terminal C of Newark International Airport. Go find em!

The reason for this blog post is because we've seen and done a lot of things in our first few years, now embarking on our third year as a brewery in New Jersey, we've learned a lot. We've made a lot of friends, we've had a lot of fun and we've tried a lot of things (some worked and some didn't.)

In two years in production we've seen the brewing industry grow and change drastically. Our few years in planning, before the doors opened, the New Jersey craft beer scene was a completely different landscape. We are excited to be a part of this craft beer boom but we weren't expecting it to happen so abruptly. We love this industry, we love its followers, we love our brewing industry friends and we can't wait to see what the future holds. That being said, it is time for a change.

Our original reasoning behind opening Dark City Brewing Company was based around creating, innovating and most importantly having fun. We've done endless amounts of all of the above but we also were adhering to this plan and production schedule that would've probably worked really well in the old NJ beer scene, but doesn't jive in the new one. With our upcoming expansion and the summer season in Asbury Park rapidly approaching, we have a unique opportunity to pivot/revamp/restructure/start over/revitalize/evolve (whatever you want to call it) and our plans are to do just that. Here's a few things going down:

We've reached a point where we know what our system and our team is capable of, we've revamped our schedule to be more flexible and exciting while simultaneously playing to the styles you've come to know and love from us. There will be new hoppy offerings, new sour offerings, new crushable offerings. Not just the same old stuff over and over with subtle tweaks.

We've decided to have a little fun with our labels and branding. We are excited to be producing these products, we have so much fun doing it and the beers are going to be fresh, new and fun. We want the vessels that contain them to reflect that same attitude. Our old branding was awesome, it was clean, simple and we loved it. It had room for improvement and was lacking excitement.

Our merchandise will be getting a bit of a refresh. We'll have the usual logo tees and hoodies, some "throwback" stuff, but we want to keep a constant rotation of fresh, different styles coming at you (in limited quantities.)

Our taproom is going to continue to be (now in a bigger way) a haven for creative/innovative experiments. New pilot beers, weird variants of your favorites, new limited/specialty offerings, small batch barrel fermented wild ales, etc. Still dog friendly, still warm and welcoming, still great people watching.

Our recurring events that you all enjoy (Sunday yoga, beer & cheese, beer & donuts, brushes & brews, etc.) will continue to be scheduled because we love them as much as you do. We are excited to have these new fresh styles and creations to bring to the table and share with you in these creative pairing environments.

Wrapping up- we're very excited about how far we have come, we're even more excited about what's to come. As a reward for those of you who continued reading this far we've provided a tiny sneak preview of three of our upcoming releases. We want to thank you all again for your continued support, we'll see you around!

Side Piece, the 4.0% cranberry sauce-inspired gose (sour), was canned yesterday and we are rushing it into a few select accounts all over the state before Thanksgiving dinner! We started making drops as soon as cans came off the line yesterday morning and will continue into Wednesday afternoon.

Here's the list of places that are getting it and what day it arrives. AS ALWAYS we ask that you CALL the store first to make sure it has arrived and is in the system! Happy hunting and Happy Thanksgiving everyone!

In mid-September we had the pleasure of getting Zombie Walk founder Jason Meehan, who is also a former brewer, in the building to collaborate on a beer for the 10th Zombie Walk! Kevin, Steve and Jason bounced ideas off one another via text for a few weeks prior to brew day. We landed on a tasty seasonal beer for the people, dead or living. The beer, aptly named "Zombie Walk", is a 5% biscuity amber ale brewed with pumpkin then spiced in the kettle with cinnamon, nutmeg, allspice, ginger and vanilla. The result is a unlike most pumpkin beers you've had, the spice is subtle, you can drink more than one. We hope you enjoy it!

This beer wouldn't exist if it wasn't for Jason dreaming up this event and we thank him for that and his help on brew day (photos below). We also got some assistance from Matthew Whelan of the Asbury Park Chamber of Commerce... We are very pleased with this product and honored to be a part of such an awesome Asbury Park event, so we want to share with everyone where they can find it this weekend! Full list below: